Free The Regent's Daughter: (Georgian Series) by Jean Plaidy Page B

you. She speaks of you continually. I can tell you that nothing is done in the right manner unless it is done as Prinney does it.’
    He smiled indulgently.
    ‘It is Prinney this and Prinney that, all the day through. And Pig is the same. In this house you are not so much His Royal as His Holy Highness.’
    ‘They are a dear pair and I am devoted to them both.’
    ‘Dearest, I wish that you could show the same affection for Charlotte that you show to Minney.’
    ‘Charlotte!’ The mention of his daughter had jerked him out of his pleasant reverie. ‘How lacking in grace that girl is.’ He shuddered. ‘She is so gauche .’
    ‘She is overawed in your presence. Believe me, she can be so charming.’
    ‘To others, but not to her father?’
    ‘It is because she is so much in awe of you … so anxious to please.’
    ‘My dearest Maria is apt to believe the best of everyone. I always feel that the child is proclaiming her indifference to me, her desire to flout me.’
    ‘Oh, no no. That’s not so.’
    He was mildly astonished. He was not used to being contradicted, although Maria did it now and then.
    ‘So I do not know my own daughter?’
    ‘Please understand me. Charlotte is so anxious to win your approval that she becomes over-anxious. She admires you greatly.’
    ‘How can you be sure of that?’
    ‘It would be impossible for her not to.’
    His good humour was momentarily restored and she hurried on: ‘If to please me …’
    ‘Anything in the world to please my dear love.’ His hand was on his heart as it was when he bowed to the people’s cheers – a not very frequent blessing these days except in Brighton.
    ‘If you would smile at her, show her a little affection, indicate that you are pleased to see her, I think you would make her very happy.’
    He sighed. ‘Every time I look at her, Maria, I think of that creature.’
    ‘Why should you? Charlotte is very like you.’
    ‘She may have my family’s looks but her manners … that awkwardness …’ He shivered. ‘That is her mother and anything that reminds me of that woman puts me into an ill temper. By God, Maria, this affair at Montague House! This child she has! If it can be proved that it is her own then I can surely be rid of her. She can be sent back to Brunswick. I should feel a great deal more at ease if she were out of the country.’
    ‘And you think it is possible to prove this?’
    ‘These matters are difficult to prove, but I am sure. And If only I could get the help I need, I would divorce her. You cannot imagine what peace of mind that would bring. The most unfortunate day of my life was when I allowed myself to go through that ceremony with her.’
    Maria was silent and he was unhappy, for he was deep in a subject which he would have preferred to forget. There were tears in his eyes, tears of self-pity. That he, the most elegant of princes, the First Gentleman of Europe, should have been married to that coarsest and most vulgar of German princesses! Now he was on the subject he could not stop talking of it.
    ‘To think of her there … living that degraded life at Blackheath, receiving those men and living on intimate terms with them … as I am convinced she did. The sailors, Smith and Manby, the artist Lawrence … any one of them might be the father of that boy, and do you realize, Maria, that that boy could have been presented to the nation as a future King of England? She has actually said that she would foist him on me if need be. She has said that before he was born she had spent a night or two at Carlton House and that as I was under the influence of brandy most of the time I could not deny it. It’s treason. Oh, God, Maria, do I deserve this?’
    ‘The Princess of Wales is certainly a very strange woman.’
    ‘Strange! She’s half-mad. She behaves like a maniac. These Douglases have done the right thing in bringing this to public notice. Before this investigation is through I hope – by God, how I hope – to